Gearing Up for Loyola Park Fall Show! YEAH!

Posted by Caleb on November 15, 2011 at 11:24 PM
After School Program

I know that every time somebody blogs about rehearsing for the next show they talk about how awesome the show is going to be.  And don’t get me wrong, the shows are awesome.  But the Loyola Park Fall show…?  Oh man, it’s going to be AWESOME!!  This show will feature over 20 original stories penned by the brilliant students of the Loyola Park after-school program.  Just to give you a taste, a tidbit, a little antipasto if you will, this show will have unhinged romance, backyard menageries, train-riding zebras, and several dinosaur and zombie-filled disaster epics.  BOOM!  Not to mention a really crazy rabbit and an infomercial.  This show is not to be missed, especially if you are a kid at Loyola Park, a grown-up who belongs to a kid at Loyola Park, or a monkey.  And by monkey, I mean one of the monkeys who have been living at Loyola Park for the past four years.  True story.

This Monday.  It happens.  World saved.

There will be no quiz, but there will be A CHALLENGE!

Posted by Brennan on May 12, 2011 at 04:07 PM
School Shows After School Program

Good Night and Good Luck,

    Right!!? 

    All right now, be real everyone. 

  So.  In an effort to stay focused on the topic at hand—that being: Poetry Show Sweetness —I have made an official Poetry Show Viewer Checklist.  (ps—Was it a weird or a regular thing that throughout my boyhood schooling, I was always taught that the way to write was “Ayn Rand Style?”  Which really just meant that, in order to stay organized with your ideas, you wrote your sentences in this order: fact-opinion-opinion, fact-opinion-opinion.  Over and over again.  This brings up a couple of questions.  One, why did that teaching fail in such a large, large way?  (Please see current attempt, and immediate failure, to stay on topic.)  And two, why would that be called Ayn Rand style?  Are all one million of the pages in Atlas Shrugged fact-opinion-opinion?)  (Last note:  There is an 87% chance that I am remembering this incorrectly.  Stay in school kids.  Don’t do drugs.) 

  All right.  Welp, here’s two opinions for you, Ayn.  The Poetry Show rules.  Boom, one.  But whoops, that was also a fact.  It was both.  And two, if one were to come and see the Poetry show, this person would feel like an awesome tree had fallen on them and smashed their ribs, but they would like it, because an awesome tree is nothing like a regular tree when falling on a person.  An awesome tree fills whatever part of your body it lands on with strength and hope.  You telling me you don’t want ribs full of hope, Ayn?  Ok then.  You think about it. 

    Let’s get to it.  The following is a checklist for you to print out and bring with you to the Poetry Show this Saturday.  Then you play a game kind of like looking at license plates and shouting out what state they say on them, and kind of like being on a scavenger hunt while sitting in a chair.  The game is called: spot all of the checklist items up there on the sweet Poetry Show stage. 

  Without further nonsense: 

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Poems are cool now, by the way.

Posted by Brennan on May 8, 2011 at 08:33 PM
School Shows After School Program

Boy oh Boy.

I feel like I want an intro phrase.  Like “Good Night, and Good Luck,” but I would say it at the beginning of every blog.  Then we would all know that we’ve started, and nobody would miss anything because maybe they aren’t paying attention.  Or maybe they’re kind of just skimming this because they have to check it as part of their job, to make sure I don’t use any swears, or try to start intense political debates, (because people be a CRAZE when they decide it’s time to comment on a political story on the internet), but mostly what they’re doing with their brain is watching this on the other half of their computer screen:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwqPn2tmIkE&feature=related

  So anyway, they might need an announcement that it’s time to start paying attention….

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One Day More

Posted by Caleb on February 11, 2011 at 10:52 PM
School Shows After School Program

Well friends, the Loyola Park cast has but one day left to pull off Monkey greatness.  Will they hit the mark?  Well, to know for sure, you’ll have to come to the show on Monday.  It’s going to be at Loyola Park, at 4:00, on Monday.  Which is also Valentine’s Day, if you’re in to that sort of thing.  But I digress.  I do want to give you a taste of the juicy stories that we have been tasked with adapting.  The Loyola Park Winter Show will feature a story about the effect the recent economic down-turn has had on the employment opportunities for under-the-bed monsters, as well as a story about an alien visiting a video-chat room.  The show will also feature a choose-your-own adventure story as well as a plethora of creation myths.  Ever wonder why T-Rex had short arms, or how giraffes got so tall?  Yeah?  Well we’ve got the answers!

I mentioned in the last posting that this cast has been working very hard, and now that I have figured out how to work my camera, I can provide photo documentation of the work.  Please enjoy the photos that I have provided.

Lastly, how many monkeys does it take to fix a car?  We don’t know either, but it’s definitely more than nine…

To Loyola Park! Clink, Clink!

Posted by Elizabeth on February 8, 2011 at 03:23 PM
After School Program

When last I wrote you about Loyola Park, the students had earned about 200 Monkey Bucks which earned them a parade.  This week, THIS week, each group earned a total of 500 Monkey Bucks and we thought, well, we GOTTA celebrate!  So what do we do?  Have a soda pop toast, of course!
Here is Tim, Toastmaster Extraordinaire, teaching us the proper toasting etiquette:

After we learned toasting etiquette, the soda was poured and we formed a great big circle.  Anyone could raise their glass to the group and toast something that they thought was really great about the work we had done today.  Here were some things that the students toasted to:
“I want to toast to all the great performances by the groups today.”
“Cheers to all the groups that were so funny.”
“Cheers to this toast!”

Here’s Brandon raising his glass to the group:

At Loyola Park After-School Program, we find things to celebrate every Monday afternoon. Here’s to that!